Justice Department Calls Megaupload Case A Success; Hands Out Cash To Cops To Do More Bogus Takedowns

from the shameful dept

Back in 2010, we wrote about Attorney General Eric Holder talking up how excited he was to create a special "IP Task Force" within the Justice Department. It was, effectively, an admission that he was happy to play Hollywood's business model protection officer on the public dime. Since then, of course, the DOJ has been involved in a fairly stunning set of disastrous attempts to "enforce" IP law -- including seizing and censoring two separate sites for over a year without real due process or evidence. Then there's the questionable attempt to deport a UK student for creating a web forum.

And, of course, the master of all screwups, the Megaupload case. Given all the info that's been released so far, you'd think that the DOJ would have a slam dunk against Megaupload -- but instead, the case has been a complete disaster for the DOJ, as every week we seem to hear about another error made in going after the company. Given how poorly the DOJ has come out in that case so far, you would think that Attorney General Holder wouldn't be highlighting it as a key example of a "success story" for his role as Hollywood's favorite inside man.

And yet... in a speech in which he talks about handing out cash to local police forces to become local versions of Hollywood's private police force, he uses Megaupload as a shining example of the success of this "Intellectual Property Theft Enforcement Program." Of course, you'd think that the top lawyer in the country would know better than to falsely call infringement theft, but apparently Holder's very good at taking Hollywood's talking points without bothering to understand the actual law. Otherwise, he wouldn't have had to "give up" in the Rojadirecta and Dajaz1 cases, after it became abundantly clear that the DOJ was about to lose big time, and could face serious problems for its actions. Instead... he just cheers on the various abuses and failings in the Megaupload case as if they were successful:

In this year alone, we have prosecuted a number of significant IP cases. For example, in January – in one of the largest criminal copyright cases in U.S. history – the Department indicted two corporations and seven individuals with operating an international organized criminal enterprise responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites.

Indicted, yes. But pretty much everything after the indictment has been an unmitigated disaster. There was the illegal raid on Kim Dotcom's home, which used the wrong documentation. There was the illegal taking of evidence out of New Zealand without permission. There was the illegally obtained intelligence info on Dotcom's location. There was the ridiculous SWAT-ification of the raid team, which New Zealand officials now admit was both overkill and a mistake. Basically, pretty much every action by the DOJ in the case has been a disaster. And this is what Holder is cheering on as he hands out money for local cops to do more of the same? Really?

obviously the man is a complete chump, using his position to do the bidding of friends of friends in Hollywood etc. but then again, the best form of defence, so it is said, is attack. by saying how successful this absolute disaster has been, stops anyone from looking more closely at what really happened. how he is still in this job after such complete fuck ups is amazing! i am sure the public have the greatest of confidence in him!!

Slam dunk? Not likely, nor was it ever.
Of course its easy to assume that when one only has the DoJ's side of the story since the DoJ has been resisting the defense from even building a defense every step of the way, illegally.

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I don't see how the case is not a success so far for the U.S. Dotcom et al. are all indicted and awaiting extradition. All those mistakes occurred in NZ and have no bearing on the case in the U.S. Seems like the anti-copyright apologists guild is just trying to spin this as a loss for the U.S. Anything to spread FUD on a copyright case, I suppose. No surprise there. The only way Dotcom can win this thing is on a technicality. On the merits, he's toast. I have no doubt that the jury will convict. So yeah, trying to spin this as a win for Dotcom and a loss for the U.S. is silly pirate-apologism.

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How about the DOJ not even being able to legally serve? Seizing the money from them, trying to claim Dotcom couldn't use a good lawyer. Wanting to destroy the evidence on the servers. Saying they can't go after Mega without SOPA then taking them down 2 days after SOPA blackouts, etc fail by DOJ

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Law enforcement breaking the law, and violating the human rights of anyone (even criminals), is no technicality.

And mistakes made in other countries certainly effect a case here. Mishandling and mismanagement of evidence calls into question the entire chain of evidence. Having private industry involved at such a level brings into question the impartiality of the investigators.

Keep on spinning AJ. Even you know this is nothing short of a debacle.

To add to the list of sins, a New Zealand spy agency that is prohibited from spying on citizens and residents was spying on Dotcom. Dotcom is an New Zealand resident.

The Prime Minister is responsible for exercising oversight over the agency. When it came out he was asked in Parliament when he first knew the agency spied on Mr Dotcom and he said September.

Then it came out he was told in Febuary. At the same time this was coming out he was announcing his trip to Hollywood to talk to the movie industry big-wigs although he has no tolerance for 'conspiracy theorists' who suggest the meeting is a reward for the Dotcom actions.

having been called out before by various senators, i would have thought that the last thing Attorney General Holder would want to do was leave himself open again to further scrutiny and accusations of being basically nothing other than an outright liar. i find it very hard to understand how public servants, regardless of how high their position, seem to think that they can say and do exactly as they want and have no recourse against them. all he is doing in this instance is condoning further illegal behaviour by other public servants, including police officers, as has already happened.

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In the world where they believe his site being down for a year actually did anything at all to hinder piracy. If they were correct in that belief, it would have been a major accomplishment since they did it without having to actually prove anything at all in court or spend much money.

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You know what's cute, AJ is supposedly going to be an attorney one day. You'd think someone studying the law would be able to at least acknowledge all the legal screw-ups ON THE PART OF BOTH COUNTRIES regarding Kim Dotcom/Megaupload.

Then again, this is Average "WHY WON'T YOU DEBATE ME?!?! RAWR!" Joe. The same man who claimed his icon was not infringing, yet when called out on it and asked to explain why it wasn't he'd rebut with "I've done so before and I'm not going to again, but trust me... it's not", then changed his icon within days.

Average_Joe. Future lawyer. I can't wait to run up against him in a court of law one day. If anything the settlement I'll receive from HIS mishandling and misapplication of the laws will more than make up for all the asinine things of his I've read on this site (as well as brain cells killed by reading such "brilliance"). And I say that and base it on his inability to see the current screw-ups. Meaning he'll do the same thing himself one day.

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Because they actually do think they can say and do whatever they want and get away with it, and they're usually right.

Obama ran an election campaign based on pointing out bad things the government was doing and promising not to do them. After he was elected, he did the exact same bad things, even more than his predecessors did. He'll probably get reelected, too.

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It pays to fail

This is very similar to what Circuit City did. The CEO fired their staff, hired them or replacements back at lower pay and then tanked their stock due to people boycotting the stores. The board was so happy to have the stock tanked they gave the CEO a million $ retention bonus. So apparently it pays to fail.

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The irony is that it alkso took considerable revenues out of a particular section of the tech industry without "fair recompense". Thus, my the DoJ's definition, the recording industry and the movie industry have both been stealing from legitimate businesses.

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If the goal was to only take down the site then that explains things. Somehow I doubt the goal was to actually prosecute anyone - the *IAA's probably just wanted the site down, and if their puppets manage to get someone sent to prison then great but that would just be icing on the cake.

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Well, to be fair to Obama, there aren't actually that many countries that have more than miniscule growth figures, and he's still doing a damn sight better than that ignorant shit we Brits have, economy-wise.

No one would remember, but Nazi Germany had a very good constitution and set of laws on the books for human rights, liberty and privacy. They technically were a democracy, had elections, members of Parliament, elected officials, courts and so on. The whole system was there and in place....

Now mind you the SS \Gestapo didn't follow these laws and human rights when going forth and arresting anyone that they felt was criminal in the eyes of the Reich.

As soon as the government justice system, prosecutors and police stop respecting the laws and human rights, then the country is no longer a democracy and is becoming the same as Nazi Germany.

Hollywood is putting itself before the citizens of the US and the rest of the world. I think some one like Steven Spielberg who takes personal exception to the miss use of the term "Nazi" and "Holocaust" should really first take notice of what is happening to his own country and what part his industry is playing in that change.

Re: Re: success

It is a success in that it has already intimidated some sites to fold before they got to bw next on Hollywood's hit list.

It is a success in demonstrating that the DOJ will ignore or outright break laws to bankrupt any site trying to stand up to them and then they will drop the charges, hand back the domains, and pretend no damage was done. But the runation is not missed by the threatened targets. Even the lack of a judge willing to help them fight back adds to the fear.

""For example, in January – in one of the largest criminal copyright cases in U.S. history – the Department indicted two corporations and seven individuals with operating an international organized criminal enterprise responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites.""

Megaupload has never been served with an indictment so how can it be indicted when it hasn't and so far can't be indicted. How can you call it being indicted as successfull when it hasn't been served as per stated in the US court and so far can't because it is outside of the US which is being argued in US court right now. The mind boggles.

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Getting one's business destroyed, which supported the legal content of millions of users, is hardly what anyone would call a win.

The only reason why this is all being painted as a win for Kim Dotcom is because the enforcement forces on the US, and the NZ agents at their beck and call, have performed so atrociously throughout this whole case it's not hard to be sympathetic for Dotcom.

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"I don't see how the case is not a success so far for the U.S. Dotcom et al. are all indicted and awaiting extradition."

Dotcom et al has NEVER been served with an indictment. Megaupload has never been served with an inidictment because it cannot be served with one because the company is based outside of the US and a foreign company cannot be served under US law which is my understanding. If an indictment cannot be served because it is a foreign company according to US law then who is at fault for not getting an indictment served.

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The way AJ is handling law you'd think he's playing an Ace Attorney game on the side of the prosecution. Pulls all sort of bullshit moves, conceals evidence from the judge, fucks with the evidence, and in the end still demands that you have to prove motivation or it's game over for you.

He'd probably consider this as a compliment, never mind the fact that Ace Attorney was designed based on the fact that Japan's judicial system is completely scuppered.

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It's been revealed in court that the FBI did indeed seize control of the servers that Megaupload leased from Carpathia in the US...but still told the New Zealand police that a heavily armed SWAT-style response was needed and needed NOW, before evidence could be destroyed by DotCom.

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The US Government is very happy to shit on our Constitution whenever they feel like doing that.
Kim Dotcom Case shows you just how low this Government has sunk.A truly illegal operation which broke Laws to do it and they fucking gloat over it like it was a great example of stopping PIRACY.
Well my Government................You can just kiss my ASS.
"It was, effectively, an admission that he was happy to play Hollywood's business model protection officer on the public dime. Since then, of course, the DOJ has been involved in a fairly stunning set of disastrous attempts to "enforce" IP law -- including seizing and censoring two separate sites for over a year without real due process or evidence. Then there's the questionable attempt to deport a UK student for creating a web forum. "
My answer to you is you can just lick a dog's butt.I am getting angrier and angrier at these so called Politicians and their Lobbyists and the large Corporations who pay off Politicians.
One of these days this Century these greedbags will get one big rude Awakening.

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If the FBI HAD already sezied control of the servers then there would be no way that Kim Dotcom could have destroyed any of the evidence if the servers were already seized. So why the need for a SWAT style response etc. when NO way could the evidence be destroyed as it was already seized. FBI or whoever are just trying to come up with something to jusify the fact when the fact couldn't have happened being as they already took care of it beforehand.

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Well, when I think of that, I don't see Joe dressed up in a maroon suit and wearing the... what is around Edgeworth's neck again? I think he'll make a better student for von Karma than Edgeworth.

Plus considering with the talks of "guilty before innocent" in nearly every story relating to the law... I imagine we have adopted that belief from the games. Also when did the DL-6 case happened again? This year?

Re: But it was a success...

The DOJ has only succeeded in making Kim Dotcom an Internet folk hero along with Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. Let them dig themselves in deeper. The cognizant know what they are doing and aren't fooled by their talk of "justice" and "intellectual property".

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Welcome to the voluntary human extinction project. Please keep your arms and legs inside the marginalized position members of the public are expected to occupy. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to redirect, or even question, the path that has been selected for you.

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In an Internet world, boudaries for legal claims can be broken.

The Megaupload case is an exercise in requesting legal action that goes beyond the legal boundaries, because the Megaupload site operates in more than one country.

What the legal rules boils down to is: If you accept money to provide a service to a member of a country, you accept all of the country's local rules and legal obligations. If you do not want to accept the rules of that country, you must proactively prevent any access, even through a third party operator, to that country's member. You also have to proactively monitor user actions, and to suppress any content that may be regarded as "not wholly the user's own creation" or taken as "unauthorized user creation utilizing an original copy of, or an unauthorized modification thereof, a copyrighted program." Failure to fully monitor and regulate such user content, would bring legal and tactical action against your company. If damages occur to neighboring unrelated websites as a result of tactical actions, such as server seizures, they have the right to sue you for their losses.

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I prefer to think of Joe in the position of Winston Payne. Thinks he's schooled us all in the way of the lawyer until he gets owned by a bottle of Cold Killer X and loses all his hair, leaving him to scream in his comically whiny voice.

Also the DL-6 case will happen in 4 years from now, assuming that the original DL-6 case happened in 2001, and 15 years later it almost expires.

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Here's a hint: if you're breaking a fuckton of other laws in your supposed "enforcement", it should and in fact does raise a lot of alarms in the minds of reasonable people. Suffice to say you do not number amongst them.

Re: In an Internet world, boudaries for legal claims can be broken.

The Internet is borderless, true, but what you suggested above is completely absurd. The POINT of the Internet is to be borderless, otherwise Youtube would look at what's on its servers, see anti-Muslim videos and vigorously deny access to hundreds of millions of people in predominantly Muslim nations...plus what's this "even through a third party operator"? Are you seriously suggesting that if I'm in, say, Turkey and access Youtube through a VPN (during one of those times the Turkish authorities have banned access to Youtube) so it looks like I'm in Norway, Youtube should be held responsible?
And oh god, do not get me started on how you think its all right for TACTICAL action (a.k.a SWAT style responses) can be brought against user generated content.

Guns are an effective defense against most recourse

All the squawking was just partisan theater. You'll notice that the D party stays pretty much mum when it's one of their own doing the dirty work. I mean, it's what they were appointed to do, isn't it?

A government free of corruption is an impossible dream. At best you can build a system where the corruption preferentially distributes its gains downward.

Noticing, but then what?

Not bloody much. The legal forms of protest aren't effective, and the effective forms of protest aren't legal. If one were paying attention, one might suspect that the US government isn't interested in participation, just continuing consent.

Re: Re: Indicted =/= Prosecuted

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"The only way Dotcom can win this thing is on a technicality. On the merits, he's toast."

The merits? You mean like the way the FBI can't or won't present enough evidence to convince a NZ court to proceed with extradition? That they can't even show a court of law that there might be a case to answer? What exactly are these merits you claim to understand better than the courts?

Dear Eric Holder,
Please shut the fuck up until you can actually do your job.
While you were focusing on the imaginary losses claimed by Hollywood you managed to allow Mexican Drug Cartels to be armed with weapons your people gave them and lost track of. They used those weapons to murder law enforcement officers who deserve much better than you seem able to provide.

Somehow you investigated corporations for ripping off consumers and destroying the economy and even with emails where wrongdoing was openly discussed you found not enough evidence to proceed.

While your office runs a dog and pony show to trump up criminal charges in a civil (at best) case, people working for you are violating their oath of office and the rules put in place to stop your office from hiding evidence from defendants.

While you were busy silencing blogs at the behest of the copyright cartels, you managed to ignore branches of the Government violating the civil rights of citizens.

You sir are corrupt, you are the head of the beast that is now nothing more than the copyright cartels enforcers. You proceed with cases of questionable merit against patsies setup by the FBI. You are more concerned with getting good press than getting the law right. You should resign after you fire every subordinate.

Be a man, clean house and let the job be done by someone who owes nothing to the cartels and thinks the law applies to everyone. You have done a great disservice to this country and you need to correct it.